Computer and Video Games quotes game designer Jesse Schell's industry
keynote at the Gamelab conference in Barcelona where he cites research from
industry analyst EEDAR saying an Xbox game accompanied by a demo typically sells
half as many copies as a game that has no demo. This seems to be a cause for
him, as it's not the first time he's gone
off on this topic. This time around he says: "You mean we spent all this
money making a demo and getting it out there, and it cut our sales in half? Yes,
that's exactly what happened to you." Actually, it's not as simple as that, and
statistical analysis rarely is. For instance, this does not account for how some recurring
franchises eschew demos because they have an established audience, while smaller
developers will often offer demos to attract attention to unknown games.

so the title of the story should actualyl be "franchises eschew demos because they have an established audience, while smaller developers will often offer demos to attract attention to unknown games"

derp

_________________________________________________"Money doesn't exist in the 24th century, the acquisition of wealth is no longer the driving force in our lives. We work to better ourselves and the rest of humanity." - Jean-Luc Picard

Back in the day when gaming was younger I'd try out games, because stuff was new and you didn't know what to expect. These days I can read a desc and know pretty much what to expect. I guess that's why I don't feel the need to play demos much anymore. Just seems easier to throw a game that sounds interesting and reviews well into my wish list and buy the full version on sale.

For a shitty game, a demo will convince them not to buy it. For a good game, a demo will convince them to buy it.

So if your experience has been that when you release demos for your games you have low sales, then it would follow that your games are shit and you are better off not making demos. Instead you are better off relying on consumer ignorance and having your consumers buy a game on the basis of wishful thinking, taking a risk and hoping your game is good.

jdreyer wrote on Jun 28, 2013, 13:51:Do people even play demos anymore?

If they wouldn't Steam wouldn't do those free game weekends, and you wouldn't see those games jump to the top of the sales charts on a free weekend.

Maybe it is different on the consoles I am not sure but on the PC especially these days in the land of the console ports I think demos do help boost sales if the game/demo is good.

Free weekends are typically well into the lifespan of a product, and are free to do. So even if they only bring in $20k you didn't spend hundreds of thousands engineering it - you just used Steam DRM.

Post-launch demos are usually somewhat meaningless because, like movies, games make the bulk of their money the first month. After that prices start falling and people tend to buy for that reason. A demo, which is expensive, doesn't help that much.I'd also argue that jdreyer isn't alone - demos aren't really a big deal anymore. I know damn well I don't feel like downloading a few gigs, installing something, and then trying it out. Either I'm pretty sure I want it or pretty sure I don't.

"Hey let me just make a statement completely randomly, without actually providing statistics, or examining whether there is a causative effect or just correlation, and let me draw conclusions from that without examining any other kind of external influence whatsoever, and then declare this as absolute fucking truth.

"And then I'll watch everyone give me attention over it over and over and over and over again."

Seriously, why the fuck does anyone pay attention to this guy? Nobody was interested in Prey until it released an absolutely rock solid demo. Everyone was whining about DE:HR and how it was going to suck, until they "leaked" that alpha, people played it and realized "Holy shit, this is FUCKING AWESOME!"

The Just Cause 2 demo was talked about for weeks and people were dying for the actual game to come out, it was that awesome.

And similarly, I'm sure there have been games where the demo made people go "wow, this is fucking terrible."

Beamer wrote on Jun 28, 2013, 11:02:So a dev has to choose between delaying his game months, not doing a demo, or doing a demo post launch. The first option is kind of dumb, and the last option is kind of dumb, so they go with the middle option, which seems the least dumb.

Unless you are trying to fleece people with shovelware, I'd almost say that releasing a demo post release is probably the better way to go. You get your game out on time, you have the opportunity to judge if your game is even worth doing a demo for based on initial sales and then if you have the extra revenue you can launch a demo to try and snag those individuals that require a demo to make a game purchase.

Although, you might be right in that a post launch demo is kinda useless today in a world of YouTube video reviews and game play shots. Plus the person needing a demo could always just borrow the game from a friend or play it at their house. Taking those two into consideration, maybe a demo isn't worth it unless you know your game is super solid, you have a good strategy to develop it and you want to boost your release week sales.

SpectralMeat wrote on Jun 28, 2013, 10:28:Following his logic games like Duke Nukem Forever or Aliens Colonial Marine should sell twice as many copies as Bioshock 1.

Not quite. His logic would be that Bioshock 1 would have sold twice as many copies if there wasn't a demo. You can't really prove this after the fact, but it goes without saying that there are a lot of stupid people out there that will buy a game if they can't try it for free.

I think for Bioshock 1 in particular it would have been the other way around.At the time that demo came out I have not even heard of Bioshock before. So I went from I've never even heard of this game before to preorder and can not wait to play it in a matter of hour after trying the demo.

For a game like Duke Nukem a demo would have cut down the game sales by about 99.9%

SpectralMeat wrote on Jun 28, 2013, 10:28:Following his logic games like Duke Nukem Forever or Aliens Colonial Marine should sell twice as many copies as Bioshock 1.

Not quite. His logic would be that Bioshock 1 would have sold twice as many copies if there wasn't a demo. You can't really prove this after the fact, but it goes without saying that there are a lot of stupid people out there that will buy a game if they can't try it for free.

That said, demos are prohibitively expensive and hard to do. Everyone whines about how they used to be done all the time, but it used to be as easy as sending out your engine and a portion of your assets, with it being locked down. Games can't be chopped up that easily anymore. Nor can engines. Nor can assets. Even the simple flow of games doesn't work as well, as they take longer to ramp up now.

So a dev has to choose between delaying his game months, not doing a demo, or doing a demo post launch. The first option is kind of dumb, and the last option is kind of dumb, so they go with the middle option, which seems the least dumb.

Yeah. Just looking at the top level of that data set, it is fairly misleading making a blanket statement like that. You really need to cut the data by review scores and compare apples to apples to really get any meaningful insight into the impact of demos on a game's life cycle.

Basically though, if you have an ass game that you don't want people to know isn't worth their money, don't make a demo and you might be able to sucker some extra people in.

For the consumer, don't buy a game unless you've played a demo, it has some good reviews from reviewers you have trusted in the past or you are willing to accept a horrible experience.

That last point I know all too well from playing Operation Darkness. The game had a lot of issues... but Werewolves and Vampires in WWII? Fuck yeah!